He is, in other words, a great person to have on your side in a presidential race.

Since the 1992 election cycle when he made his first federal-level campaign contribution, Dimon, along with his wife, have donated about $730,000 to federal candidates and committees. The vast majority of that sum went to Democrats.

But Dimon and his wife aren’t party loyalists: They have given to nearly 80 different politicians in both parties and every president since President George H.W. Bush, although Dimon’s donation to President Barack Obama occurred in 2004 while he was first running to be a U.S. senator.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has received the most money from Dimon over the years, at $17,000, all while Schumer was still a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the late 1990s. During the 2008 election cycle, while Schumer chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Dimon gave the committee $55,500.

Even without Dimon’s financial support, Romney has raised more than $2.5 million from the banking and securities and investment industries so far in the 2012 race. That includes $44,000 from employees of Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase and $293,000 from Goldman Sachs, the investment firm whose employees are Romney’s largest contributor thus far.

The source, a group called Citizens for a Greater America, was started by Mike Toomey, the same Texas lobbyist who founded Make Us Great Again — one of five Super PACs supporting Perry’s candidacy. Citizens for a Greater America’s listed address is also the same as that of the treasurer for Make Us Great Again.

Citizens for a Greater America is a registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(4) group, or a nonprofit “social welfare” group, that isn’t required to publicly disclose its donors. As such, contributions to the group don’t count towards federal contribution limits, meaning donors can give unlimited amounts — as they could to a super PAC — but also anonymously to support the group’s cause. In this case, that cause will likely be Perry’s presidential aspirations, which is allowed as long as such politics-related expenditures don’t constitute the majority of its spending.

This campaign finance loophole — using a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group for unlimited anonymous spending — is already being exploited by political operatives on both sides of the aisle.

Meanwhile, liberal super PAC Priorities USA Action, which received a $2 million donation from DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg earlier this year according to the Center’s research, has a nonprofit sister organization called Priorities USA. Both groups plan to help re-elect President Barack Obama.

The use of 501(c)(4) groups for political advertising has earned the ire of campaign finance watchdogs, including the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21. On Wednesday, those two groups asked the IRS to investigation Crossroads GPS, Priorities USA and two other politically active nonprofit groups.

YOUNG MONEY SUPER PAC: A newly-minted super PAC called CausePAC aims to promote the cause of young voters and politicians.

The group’s website claims it will be “dedicated to supporting candidates for political office who are dedicated to progressive values and are under the age of 40.”

This demographic isn’t adequately represented in the political environment today, its founders say.

“The population is trending young,” CausePAC secretary Zac Townsend told OpenSecrets Blog. “This active and important age demographic isn’t reflected in Congress or up and down the political spectrum.”

So the group wants to both attract young political donors and back younger candidates who are in need of funding or support.

To start with, the group will focus on state and local elections, Townsend said, and not the presidential election, where the youngest frontrunner is 51-year-old Jon Huntsman.

“We’re working now to create a network of donors that’s national,” Townsend said. “Our hope is that donors in particular cities will think about candidates they want to support locally and do that.”

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